Das Leben der Anderen

A series on contemporary European cinema.

1) The Lives of Others
(Germany, 2006)

More often than not the most effective or tensest moments in a film are delivered through subtle details. A single nod, a close-up, or even silence can prove more crucial in building-up a story than a million gimmicks.

The Lives of Others (original title: Das Leben der Anderen) is possibly the best film I've ever watched in terms of how subtlety is at the core of a powerful story.

Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others is a drama set at the peak of East German communism. It's 1984 and no-one suspects that one of the most stifling and controlling political regimes of the twentieth century is actually a few years away from dissolving.

East Germany was home to one of the most powerful secret police forces known to man. Making sure that nothing could ever change, loyal and devoted Stasi informers were there to obediently enforce submission. Threats, arrests, carrots and sticks were dished out with varying degrees of brutality by an army of zealots competing for who could gain the prize for the most righteous servant of "the state" and make a career out of it.

Except that, when your entire concept of power is based on grassing people up, it's only a matter of time before the entire edifice crumbles.

A state like the former DDR was bound to be consumed from within. Everyone was a potential suspect. You were monitored if you dissented and you were monitored if you didn't - the idea being that you've got to have something to hide if you're toeing the party line so religiously.

These are the premises behind The Lives of Others.

Playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) is one of the few artists the regime hasn't managed to alienate or force into exile.

His loyal and inoffensive work, with the added bonus of being one of the very few DDR writers still read in the West, grants him a fairly privileged life and access to powerful friends.

His life, however, is about to be turned upside down as powerful Stasi officers start suspecting that not even he is above suspicion.

Determined to dig up dirt, they decide to put him under strict surveillance, bugging his flat and monitoring everything 24/7. The task is assigned to officer Wiesler, ruthless, dedicated and robotic as well as a firm believer in the East German state and therefore a rising star within the secret police.

Trouble is, Wiesler will soon realise that behind Dreyman's surveillance there is a gruesome abuse of power. A mighty Minister has cast his eyes on the playwright's actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria - blackmailing her into an affair.

What makes the story particularly fascinating is the way it unravels. Each of the characters maintains an aura of mystery about them until the end, almost in line with the general state of mistrust that reigned supreme in the former DDR.

And so the viewer is not quite sure whether Dreyman has indeed something to hide, nor is it obviously clear that Christa-Maria is not involved in something shady. Wiesler himself - is he truly warming up to the people he is monitoring or will he put his loyalty to "the state" before basic issues of humanity?

Also masterful is the meticulous reconstruction and depiction of East German landscapes. Minimalistic designs, modernist offices and barren interiors add up to perma-grey skies and a rarefied atmosphere to portray a sense of general sallowness and fear.

Intense, claustrophobic and suspenseful, The Lives of Others is a gripping tale of humanity before it's a drama or a thriller.

Awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006, it is definitely one of the best productions to have hailed from continental Europe over the last few decades.

What is Germany doing that we aren't?

Germany has recovered from the recession faster than any other country. Here is why.

The days when Tony Blair was lecturing various EU countries on the importance of adopting the Anglo-Saxon model of beefed-up finance are now long gone.

When the biggest global recession in decades kicked in, Germany was able to weather the storm and recover much quicker and better than Britain, the US, or any other major Western economy.

Some of the reasons may be too complex for the scope of a blog post. Yet it's interesting that, while successive UK governments spent the last three decades actively pursuing overreliance on bullshit economy, Germany did not fall for short-termist solutions.

For one thing, not giving up on its manufacturing is certainly reaping the harvest now - look at how its booming export sales are proving the country's biggest asset as the Germans are getting out of recession faster than anyone else.

And so a number of legitimate questions arise. Why is it that after registering a slump of -4.7% last year, Germany is now forecast to end 2010 with a GDP growth of 3.6%, its fastest pace since reunification, while Britain is still finding its feet?

And why is it that while unemployment is still rising or stagnating in the US, Britain or other EU countries, the figures are going down fast and steady in Germany?

During the bubble years, Blair and Brown could at least boast that the UK's jobless figures were regularly lower than the rest of Europe. And it was true. Between 2000 and 2007, unemployment in Britain was never any higher than 5.5% (see this) while, in the same period, the German figures were regularly double that rate - between 8 and 10 per cent (see this).

Now look at the last two years. UK unemployment has overtaken Germany's at a hair-raising pace. While the jobless rate in Britain is now tickling 8 per cent, in Germany it decreased to 7.3 per cent at the start of 2010 and then further lowered to 6.7% in October (see this) - again, its best figures since reunification.

So what are the Germans doing that we're not, to the extent that many analysts are now openly talking of a "German Miracle"?

The answer lies in a policy that the German government adopted at the start of the crisis. It's called kurzarbeit and it literally means "short work". While other countries spent unprecedented sums on bailing out banks or dubious stimulus programmes, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government (at the time a coalition of centre-right CDU and centre-left SDP) took a unique gamble by spending huge sums bailing out its work force.

And that's because, under kurzarbeit, employers hit by the downturn are encouraged to keep their workers part-time rather than make them redundant. The Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) will cover up to 67% of lost wages and will also take care of national insurance and other contribution. The idea is that:

a) mass redundancies often mean a permanent loss of skilled work and specialised trade, especially in the industrial sector. By keeping workers active through a combination of part-time and training, the economy benefits the moment trade picks up - which is exactly what happened as Germany boomed in 2010;

b) the focus on employment and wages spared the country a vicious circle of mass unemployment leading to a drop in both tax revenue and consumer confidence - in turn leading to vast numbers of people defaulting on their mortgages and loans. In other words, as the money reaches consumers directly, it flows back into the market straightaway.

This may look expensive at first (£5.1bn a year), but it saved Germany a fortune in both welfare costs and bailing out banks.

Compare what Germany spent on their bail-out: 1.4% to 2.2% of gross domestic product (between €34bn and €52bn). In Britain it was a staggering 19.8%, almost a fifth of its GDP - and that's before the official cost was actually discovered to stand at an even higher £850bn.

Of course, the experiment is not without its critics. From the left, it's often said that Germany's recovery has taken place at the expense of the rising numbers of low-wage workers and unprecedented wage restraint. From the right, the objection that kurzabeit would simply lead to "a backlog of job cuts", to quote what the president of the German Bundesbank said last year.

And yet, time is showing that Germany's route to recovery is the correct one. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the kurzabeit scheme saved nearly 500,000 jobs in 2009 alone and two months ago the German Upper House Bundesrat decided to extend it until March 2012.

More recents news report that Germany's industrial sector is currently in need of 34,000 engineers and 23,000 factory workers.

Indeed, a German success story.

Jewish doctor walks out on Nazi patient

A brave surgeon in the German town of Paderborn refused to operate on a patient as he spotted a swastika tattooed on his arm.

The strict German privacy laws have prevented reporters from Bild (where the story first appeared) to give out details regarding the people involved or the type of surgery in question.

What is known, however, is that the doctor was set to start a routine operation (perhaps a hernia or appendicitis) when he discovered a Nazi tattoo on the patient's forearm: the appalling Reich's eagle perched on a swastika.

At that point the surgeon asked a colleague to continue and walked out on the operation. Bild reported that the doctor spoke to the patient's wife saying - and credit to him -"I will not operate on your husband, I can't, I'm Jewish and my conscience doesn't allow me".

The other doctor successfully completed the operation, but it's not known whether the patient was planning to sue.

He may want to think twice, however. The doctor (can you blame him?) may have turned his back on the Hippocratic Oath, but in Germany any public display of Nazi symbols is punishable under criminal law.

Youth unemployment: German lessons

Youth unemployment data across the EU suggest that countries with more developed apprenticeship policies have minimised the worst effects of the downturn.

In Britain, 17.9% of those below the age of 25 are unemployed. True, some countries are faring even worse. The percentage is 21.5 per cent in Ireland while, in Spain, the jobless amount amongst the young has now reached a staggering 42.6 per cent.

Countries like Denmark and Germany, however, show a different picture - with the unemployment rate amongst the under-25s standing at 8.9 and 10.5 respectively.

Of course, there is no obvious reason for this disparity. However, Germany has long been known as a country placing apprenticeships at the core of its education system.

The German system is a model for youth work contracts. It is called 'the dual system'. Once completed compulsory education, either at 16 or 19, a worker can start an apprenticeship at a company which can last between 2 and 3 and 1/2 years. During this period, for two days a week, the apprentice will have to learn the theoretical background at a vocational school known as Berufsschule.

The precise skills and theory taught on German apprenticeships are strictly regulated. The employer is responsible for the entire education programme.

There are aroud 350 trades to choose from: anything from accountant to builder or from medical worker to baker.

About two thirds of young people who finish school decide to begin an apprenticeship every year.

The fact that the contract is really an 'apprenticeship' doesn't mean that the worker has no rights. Unlike other countries such as Italy, contracts designed to help the young are not misused to maximise profits out of unprotected workers. The company is required to pick up the social security costs as well as unemployment insurance and pension entitlements.

What varies is the salary. For instance, an apprentice metal worker in the Baden-Wurtemberg region will earn around 810 Euros a month during his first year, €861 in his second, €937 in the third and €988 in his fourth. His counterpart in Berlin will probably take home €100 less each month.

This can partly explain why there is a lower percentage of university students in Germany when compared to other Western countries, but there is a much lower percentage of people entering the German labour market with no qualifications. This seems to have protected, at least partially, German workers and job seekers from the worst effects of the downturn.

Britain, instead was hit on two fronts.

One one side, the 1980s and 1990s saw a sharp decrease in the number of apprenticeships which was only reversed through increased investment since 1997. The number of learners of all ages starting on the Apprenticeships programme has more than doubled from around 75,000 to around 180,000 today.

On the other side, the Labour government was guilty of placing unrealistic expectations on the University system. You may remember the old Blairite obsession with having 50% of people in Higher Education by 2010. It was never going to be economically sustainable, which is why the Government is now -very shyly- trying to support graduate internship positions.

At the moment, it's not going very well. Out of 725,000 unemployed 18-24 Britons, there are 3,400 graduate internship positions, only 47% of which are paid.

Good Bye Lenin!

Imagine if the former DDR hadn't walled people in.

This film came out in 2003 but I watched it again last night inspired by all the Berlin wall-related news reports. Today is in fact the 20th anniversary of when the Berlin wall opened, kickstarting the process of reunification between East and West Germany and the end of the Cold War.

Good Bye Lenin! is the story of a family in East Berlin. It's 1989 and, in the midst of the popular protests that will lead up to change, Alex's mother (a devoted East German socialist), suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. By the time she comes round, Berlin has changed at the fastest pace imaginable.

An entire regime has been swept away, a fact rendered most obvious by the most mundane details. Old East German food and drink brands all but disappeared in weeks. Western cars and billboards populate the streets, TV is already radically different and so is a job market where celebrity 'cosmonauts' have to resort to driving taxis to make ends meet.

Afraid that his mother's frail heart may not be able to bear all this, Alex decides to maintain the illusion that nothing's changed and that the wall's still there. The extent to which he's prepared to go is touchingly comical. Alex begs his neighbours to play along and travels the length and breadth of Berlin in search of disused East German goods that he can show his mum. But the best bits are the fake TV broadcasts, which Alex is able to knock up courtesy of his friend Dennis, an aspiring film director.

And here I stop, because it's not my intention to spoil the story. Debates can carry on forever as to whether the sudden end of East Germany was a good thing or not, or whether people's expectations where quickly betrayed by the ruthless but inevitable structural changes.

What's amazing about Goodbye Lenin! though, is how all of the above is depicted at a human level, with a family tragedy centred around our innate fear of change and penchant for illusion and denial. Ultimately, it's a story about the passing of time and society's evolution. Just imagine if the changes that happened to us in the space of forty years were all condensed within a month or two.

Except that this is exactly what happened in East Berlin, where the binge of changes proved so sweepingly exciting that it's almost as though nobody took time to notice that an entire world, the same world millions had grown up in, had slipped away in an instant.

Alex's illusion of an East Germany that is still alive and well must have been the equivalent of us trying to recreate the 1960s forty years down the line- like decorating a house without PCs, microwaves or DVD players and with analog TVs that can only show BBC1 and ITV .

The make-believe world of Goodbye Lenin! is also touchingly political. It dreams up an entire ideology that bypasses the reality of a 40-year-old dictatorship. When Alex plays his final fake news report and Sigmund Jahn makes his imaginary speech as president, this is what he says:

"Socialism isn't about walling yourself in. It's about reaching out to others and living with them. It means not only dreaming about a better world, but making it happen. Therefore, I have decided to open the borders of the GDR".

Die Linke: a left-wing success story

The amazing triumph of Germany's left wing party casts some doubt on Angela Merkel's chances of re-election.

A succession of articles and editorials have been penned to analyse why the European left may have failed so far to cash in on the financial crisis. With the partial exception of Spain, left-of-centre parties have taken one drubbing after the other in Britain, France and Italy.

To the surprise of many, centre-right and far-right parties were more successful in intercepting voters' anxieties through a combination of faux-pious approach to big business and finance and distraction techniques centred around real and imaginary threats to social values, national identities and tradition.

In the meantime, the moment the economic tide turned, having spent a decade or two doing somersaults to reassure Big Business took a devastating toll on the moderate left. In Britain, France and Italy, for instance, an increasing number of voters identify the centre-left as weak, useless and incapable to empathise with struggling families and workers alike.

Last Sunday though, something new happened. In the three German länders (federal states) that held local elections, Die Linke (a left-wing coalition founded less than five years ago) netted an unprecedented victory. In Saarland, they went from 2,3% in 2004 to the current 21,3%, an increase of 19 points, while scoring 23.6% in Saxony and an even more impressive 27% in Thuringia, in some cases even outpolling the centre-left Social Democrats.

While pre-ballot opinion polls did anticipate a positive night for Die Linke, such an emphatic triumph turned up totally unexpected. Wooed by the charisma of left-wing maverick Oskar Lafontaine, millions of Germans decided to listen to "a party with attitude", one that tells it like it is on redistribution, big business and the most brutal side effects of unfettered capitalism.

Whereas the last ten years have witnessed in turn the rise of green politics, neo-conservatism, and the xenophobic far-right, this is the first time in ages an openly socialist party notched up such a clear victory.

Whether the reason is the banks returning to the old bingeing habits like nothing happened, stagnant salaries, or the continuing rise of dole queues, it will be interesting to see if Die Linke's feat is the start of a left-wing revival across Europe.

Slicing the Leftist pie.

The consensus is that the Right triumphed at the Euro elections. We say it's courtesy of a leftist vote split into a myriad of tiny fractions.

"Voters steer Europe to the Right", says the BBC as results keep coming in from the European elections. It's the same analysis wherever you look.

BBC correspondent Mark Mardell talks of "March of the right", with particular reference to the advance of far-right parties across the continent, while the Independent talks of "Right advances in Europe" and, in case the message hadn't been rammed home yet: "Right wing parties sweep to power in the European Parliament", is the Daily Mail's headline .

The Mail adds that the electoral wipeout was a "vote against stimulus spending and corporate bailouts", more or less in line with the theory that European Social Democracy is in serious trouble.

That may well be the case but, as of today, few have picked up on the crucial factor that turned the right's victory into plain sailing: the spectacular divisions within the left.

Let's look at five of what the BBC calls "Europe's big six".

France. There's reports all round that, with 27,8% of the vote, Sarkozy mastered an "amazing victory". But how's that the case when every opinion poll in the run-up to the vote suggested Le Président was in trouble? A quick glance at the left's line-up for the elections should shed some light.

The Socialist Party's dismal performance cannot be read without taking into account the historic 16.2% pocketed by the Greens. More though, if you put together the Front de Gauche's 6% and the 5% of the brand new Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) led by rising star Olivier Besancenot (without forgetting Bayrou), the progressive anti-Sarkozy vote is in excess of 50 per cent, hardly a popular endorsement for the President.

Italy. In Berlusconiland, the centre-left's internal divisions are now legendary. Counting the myriad of parties mushrooming up to the left of Partito Democratico has become humanly impossible. Elbowing their way through the crowd, meet the fiercely anti-Berlusconi Italia dei Valori (8%) and not one but two, I mean two, post-Communist Parties, each of them netting a rough 3,5% - plus plenty of other tiny groups.

Add them altogether and they could bring off a comfortable 5% lead ahead of the Berlusconi coalition. Alas, such parties tend to disagree on stuff like whether Fidel Castro should have shaven his beard in the summer of 1964 - which is why Berlusconi's grip on power remains secure until he pops his clogs.

Germany. Similar story. No doubt the SPD is looking battered, reaping perhaps the harvest of coalition governments with the centre-right. But did its haemorrhaging votes shift to the right? By the look of it, the answer is no. With the Greens and Die Linke pulling off a total of 20%, the assumption that free-market conservatism came out on top ends up looking a bit flimsy. Yet, courtesy of the atomised left, it's Angela Merkel who's popping the champagne.

Last but not least, Britain. There's absolutely no doubt the government was handed a drubbing of epic proportions, perhaps the natural consequence of 12 years of New Labour meticulously eating away at what was left of Britain's progressive politics. And yet, here too, the Green Party managed a historic 8.6%, suggesting many disillusioned Labour ballots found a temporary shelter.

But then witness the the depressing sight of leftists grupuscules fighting for the crumbs- if that. Can anyone explain, for instance, the tactical differences between Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party (1,1% of the vote), Bob Crowe's NO2EU (1%) and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (0,3%)? What did they hope to achieve exactly, aside from splitting the leftist vote into a myriad of tiny fractions?

And while arguments about socialist purity thrive, today the Europeans wake up more right-wing than at any time since WWII.

Valkyrie

Mark Reed on Brian Singer's new film.

Tom Cruise clearly divides film fans. Sometimes, he's easily the worst thing in the film, a goddamn nuts one-note Scientologist moonunit who tries to be the Everyman character but ends up being a psychological freak who speaks in what sounds like English (but isn't), tries to demonstrates emotions but instead demonstrates facsimiles of feeling, and never quite convinces me, because Tom Cruise is too famous to act, because I cannot forget whenever I see him that I am not watching Von Stauffenberg, but I'm watching Tom Cruise in an eyepatch and a grey hat.

Sometimes, his limited emotional palette - which never truly convinces me - suits certain films fine. The Mission Impossible and Top Gun films, and even Eyes Wide Shut Cruise was surprisingly good. Then again, Kubrick would raise anyone's game. Still, Nazi's are cool. They had uniforms designed by Hugo Boss, after all. All those peaked caps, iconography and muted colours. Cor. Maybe that's why the Nazi's have caught our attention for so long, that sense of natty oppressive fashion. That, and World War II was the first war to be captured on news film and subject to the world of the 'talkies'. In these current times, the sense of good vs evil is a lot more ambigious, in those, relatively simpler times, it was fairly obvious, there were The Commie-Nazis, and the Goodies.

From the off, the film portrays a world of shades of grey. Maybe I'm projecting our current political state in the film, but the idea of disgruntled soldiers in the desert questioning the morality and righteousness of the cause seems reminiscent of recent history: and if that is intentional, in one way, the film could be seen as justifying an assasination attempt upon leaders because the human cost is clearly seen whilst also showing the architecture of a mindset that moves people around as if they were chess pieces on a board. Fast forward, and Stauffenberg is rehabilitated into Berlin.

There's a tense, somewhat nailbiting first prologue which - if you know nothing about the film or the plot - actually means little until after the event. That, and the fact that the films main target, Sir Adolf of Hitler spends most of the film as a shadow, a cipher, a name, a painted image, and only appears in three or four scenes, and - most of the time - is barely visible, with only a handful of lines of dialogue. This works effectively. The temptation when you have Hitler in anything is to allow him to dominate the movie, and any on-screen Hitler who isn't Bruno Ganz is a letdown, and so Singer effectively underplays the role.

Nonetheless, the film is a brisk, effective two hours, made of effective casting (Eddie Izzard is somewhat surprisingly understated) and a realistic mise-en-scene using the remaining locations where possible. Like any similar film, half of the tension is in the planning, the judicious use of flash-fowards and possible worlds to forecast what may - or may not - happen, which aptly foreshadows tension... and keeps the snorers awake. If anything this film reminds me of a maudlin caper film from the Sixties; where all of the film is in the planning and the setting up of 'the job', whatever it is, be it bank heist, assasination, political coup, and the tension comes from not what will happen, but what goes wrong.

What is compelling about the film is the dilemmas it still presents us now. How close the plot came, what happened, how the whole thing hinged on one decision by one man in one office who couldn't decided which way to turn, about one hundred tiny changes to our everyday lives, where to stand, the temperature, rain, all these things, and how most of us are often unwitting participants in huge plots of which no one person knows everything, or even, most things. When the house of cards that is the plot starts to fall, we all see how fragile every plan we have is, how high the stakes are, and how lucky al of us are to have anything in our lives.

Valkyrie is an intense and compelling film that lays clear a fascinating fragment of history that is rarely touched upon, and acts, in a way, as a rather brilliant prequel to the masterful Downfall. Recommended.

Rule Britannia

Berlin after 3 months. An update.

My first three months here have been less dramatic than one would have expected, considering I have been experiencing a deep rooted angst about moving abroad for the past 3 years. A fear that lay buried until the prospect of moving to Frankfurt reared its ugly head. Anyone who knows me knows that I denied Frankfurt my presence for the next academic year, instead deciding to hold out for the Holy Grail of German cities: Berlin. My feelings at the start of my German degree revolved around the musings that after spending two years away from home in Birmingham (and I use 'away from home' loosely), I would be ready for the next step in the adventure known as life - doing one accross the channel to Bonny Deutschland.

In reality however,I was only ever 20 minutes away from my family, and about 10 minutes away from my brother and nephews. I have never been further, nor did I want to be. That was how I liked it. I found myself comfy and settled and totally content in Birmingham - those sentiments only securing my doubts & resentment of leaving British soil. But then, after 2 years of Grammar-based turmoil I finally took the plunge and signed my 12 month legally-binding contract with an aloof, long-haired, wiry looking German man, for a 2 bedroomed flat in the heart of Berlins art scene.

In theory this all sounds perfect, and it really is. But I have come to a certain conclusion that places can be incredible and amazing and inspiring and life-fulfilling. But for me, the place is not charachterised by the monuments or the shopping districts (although I am partial to the latter!), it's solely about the people you surround yourself with. In short, I miss England. Not for its pathetic excuse for public transport. Not for the BullRing or Topshop. Not for the £1.99 fry ups in Asda. I miss the god blessed people!